Israel kept up its air strikes on Gaza Wednesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to ramp up the pressure on Hamas as hopes faded for a US-announced ceasefire plan.

Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh accused Israel of deliberately undermining negotiations for a truce and hostage release deal because it did not want to end the war.

The Israeli military said it had carried out 25 strikes in 24 hours, targeting "military structures, terrorist infrastructure, terrorist cells and rigged structures".

On a hillside near Palestinian landowner Olayan Olayan's olive groves, young Israeli settlers are hammering out a new, illegal outpost in a UNESCO-protected zone.

Olayan and his neighbours have long battled attempts to settle the land in Battir, a heritage site in the Israeli-occupied West Bank famed for its ancient stone terraces.

Israeli construction in the West Bank has boomed since the war began in the Gaza Strip, even though all settlements in the territory are considered illegal under international law.

The families of five Israeli women soldiers held hostage in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Tuesday pleaded with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make an accord for their release before he goes to Washington next week.

Facing mounting international and domestic criticism, Netanyahu is set to speak to a joint meeting of the US Congress on July 24 and to meet President Joe Biden. The families released new pictures of the detainees to increase pressure on Netanyahu.

Hamas led other Palestinian armed groups in committing hundreds of war crimes in the surprise October 7 attack on Israel that set off the Gaza war, Human Rights Watch said in a report released Wednesday.

Hamas reacted with fury to one of the most in-depth international studies on the unprecedented incursion into southern Israel, demanding that HRW withdraw the report and "apologise".

The report set out a host of crimes under international law that it says Hamas and its allies breached.

Ultra-Orthodox protesters fought police near Tel Aviv on Tuesday hours after Israel's military said it would begin issuing draft notices for men in the religious Jewish community within days.

Historically exempt from compulsory military service, ultra-Orthodox seminary students are being called up as Israel's war in Gaza and potential conflict with Hezbollah on the northern border saps resources and fuels resentment against those who do not have to serve.

United Nations agencies and international aid groups must "come back and do more for the people of Sudan", the head of medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said on Tuesday.

MSF international president Christos Christou told AFP that after 15 months of brutal conflict in the northeast African country, nearly one in three wounded have been women or children under the age of 10.

Lebanese official media said separate Israeli strikes Tuesday in south Lebanon killed five people including three Syrian children, with Hezbollah announcing rocket fire at Israel in retaliation.

"Three Syrian children" were killed "in an enemy raid that targeted farmland in the village of Umm Toot", the National News Agency (NNA) said.

It also said an "enemy" drone strike had targeted a motorcycle on the Kfar Tebnit road elsewhere in south Lebanon, killing two Syrians.

Israeli police said security forces shot dead a Palestinian in the West Bank Tuesday after he stabbed an officer, while a relative said the man had been pursued by soldiers.

Police said soldiers and border guards were carrying out a "counterterrorism operation" in the town of Al-Bireh near Ramallah when a knife-wielding man ran towards them.

The man "stabbed" one member of the security force and another "responded by shooting, killing the terrorist", police said.

Authorities in Hamas-run Gaza said dozens of Palestinians were killed Tuesday in three separate strikes, as Israel pounded the territory despite renewed US criticism of the high civilian toll.

Gaza civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the three air strikes killed at least 44 people and wounded dozens within an hour across the war-torn Palestinian territory. Israel confirmed it carried out two of the strikes.

Six people including four Pakistanis were killed and nearly 30 wounded in a shooting near a Shiite mosque in the Omani capital Muscat, officials said Tuesday, a rare attack in the country that was claimed by Islamic State.

Monday's mosque attack came as Shiites this week mark Ashura, an annual day of mourning that commemorates the seventh-century death in battle of Imam Hussein, regarded by the branch as the rightful successor to the Prophet Mohammed.